SLU, Des Peres hospitals face unions

St. Louis hospital executives are watching intently as unions attempt to organize nurses and other workers at St. Louis University Hospital and Des Peres Hospital — the first such campaign in at least five years.

Two simultaneous drives at the hospitals, which are owned by for-profit Tenet Healthcare Corp., based in Dallas, are being led by SEIU Healthcare and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee. So far, the CNA/NNOC’s work with nurses at SLU Hospital is further along, with elections slated for June 7, at which time nurses will vote for or against union representation by NNOC-Missouri.

“Of course they’ll be watching what happens here, what the collective bargaining agreement is, if there is one,” said Michael Lowenbaum, a co-managing partner of The Lowenbaum Partnership, which represented Mercy in contract negotiations with a nurses’ union for several years before the union decertified in 2007. “The medical centers will monitor that agreement.”

The efforts at SLU and Des Peres hospitals began around May 1, according to Don Gardiner, assistant to the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board in St. Louis, which is running the June 7 election. He said that in early May, the unions began collecting authorization cards, indicating workers support a vote, from nurses and other employees. The NNOC has been working with some 600 nurses at SLU Hospital and in recent weeks delivered enough cards to force a vote. (Cards from at least 30 percent of the nurses are required.) As for authorization cards from nurses at Des Peres Hospital, Gardiner said he didn’t want to speculate, but added, “We may have a petition there before too long.”

Meanwhile, SEIU Healthcare has been working with service, maintenance and technical employees at both SLU and Des Peres hospitals. On May 29, SEIU delivered authorization cards to the NLRB’s St. Louis office. There are about 600 service, maintenance and technical workers at SLU Hospital, and between 200 and 240 at Des Peres Hospital, said Gardiner, who said the vote will be around the same time as the nurses’ vote at SLU Hospital.

Officials from Tenet declined to comment for this article.

But while local hospital officials are keeping tabs on the situation, there’s some speculation that organizing efforts at SLU and Des Peres hospitals are isolated. “The current campaign, I believe, has to do with the relationship the parent, Tenet, has with these unions,” Lowenbaum said. “This whole thing is coming together very quickly. It just indicates that there’s cooperation between the hospital and the union.”

The current efforts in St. Louis come several years after the two unions entered a partnership in order to maximize union membership nationwide. Previously, the Service Employees International Union and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee competed fiercely for members. In March 2009 they agreed to coordinate contract talks with a focus on workers at large hospital systems nationwide, including Tenet Healthcare Corp., HCA Healthcare and Catholic hospital chains.

Within months, Tenet workers in Florida and California who were members of both CNA/NAOC and SEIU staged what the unions described as an “unprecedented national protest.” In Missouri in 2010, 600 nurses at Kansas City’s Research Medical Center, which is owned by HCA, became members of the NNOC. Today, the NNOC is also an affiliate of National Nurses United, which has 175,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates currently represent 4,000 nurses in nine Tenet hospitals in Florida, Texas and California.

In the current St. Louis campaign, it is not clear what the unions are seeking.

Karen Backus, communications coordinator for SEIU Healthcare, said the union “cannot comment on current organizing activity in the area at this time.” Nationwide, SEIU has 2.1 million members. SEIU Healthcare has 1.1 million members, including more than 85,000 nurses.

But in the past, the unions have fought for wage increases, collective bargaining standards, enhanced staffing ratios, improved retirement security and workplace safety protections. In a statement, NNOC officials said nurses have joined the union “due to its record of successful advocacy for strong patient safety standards, economic and workplace improvements for RNs,” among other things.

“If the RNs do vote to join NNOC-Missouri, they would be the only currently unionized RNs in St. Louis,” NNOC’s statement said.

Nurses at Mercy Hospital St. Louis, then St. John’s Mercy Medical Centter, were the most recent to be members of a union, and they decertified their union in 2007 following eight years of representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 655. Local 655 organized the nurses in 1999 and represented them through two strikes, one in 2001 and another in late 2004 that ended in 2005. A petition to decertify the union was filed after that strike amid waning union membership and participation among nurses. At the time of the vote, the nurses had the option of joining Nurse Alliance, a unit of SEIU, but opted for no union representation.

Mercy officials declined to comment for this article.

Though St. Louis is a heavily unionized city, health care is an exception, Lowenbaum said. “The (health care) organizations are so large, you have to go after so many people,” Lowenbaum said. “Unions weren’t that interested in tackling these medical centers.”

In fact, in 2003 the United American Nurses union failed to get a majority of votes required to unionize at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Four groups of workers at St. Anthony’s Medical Center voted against union representation by the United Health Care Workers on several occasions between 2000 and 2002.

Hospital officials in St. Louis indicated a strong preference for working directly with employees. In a statement, BJC HealthCare said its leadership believes the best interests of patients and employees “are served by direct communication between management and staff.” Likewide, SMM Health Care - St. Louis said its officials value a “direct relationship our employees rather than through a third-party.” Officials from St. Anthony’s declined to comment.

More recently, the Missouri Nurses Association (MONA) ended its collective bargaining program at the end of 2011. MONA still provides professional advocacy and continuing education programs to nurses. “We had been in the business for several years and only had four units in the state, and no one was coming forward and wanting to organize,” said Jill Kliethermes, chief executive. “It was a very small percentage of what we were doing.”

The current organizing effort at SLU Hospital and Des Peres Hospital comes amid leadership changes at both institutions. Last October, John Grah was named chief executive of Des Peres Hospital, a 143-bed facility, replacing Michele Meyer. In January 2011, Tenet named Phillip Sowa chief executive of SLU Hospital, which has 356 beds, replacing Crystal Haynes.

Tenet bought SLU Hospital for $300 million in 1998, a year after it snapped up Des Peres Hospital.